


Brothers

by sadsparties



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Enjolras isn't really here but he's pretty much HERE, Family Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 19:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadsparties/pseuds/sadsparties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre receives news of Lamarque's illness and steels himself for what is to come. His family, however, is not as ready.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers

The bag was close to bursting. A book here, a cravat there, loose sheets of paper in the pockets. Much as he did when he left Paris, Combeferre packed hastily. A letter had summoned him home to Poitiers, and now a letter summoned him back. At hearing of his mother’s illness, he rushed to be at her side, braving the wet and perilous journey through hills and plateau. His mother’s symptoms were minor – a persistent cough, pale skin, weak body – but with the terrible miasma of fear caused by cholera, one could not have been sure. He had found her still alive, with two attending doctors declaring that the cough was merely a cough. Combeferre had spent his days making certain, leaving her bedside only to consult his books, but at the arrival of news, he could no longer do so. Combeferre had long mastered the contents of the letter folded on the desk. Lamarque had fallen ill, the cause yet unknown, but Enjolras feared the worst.

It was the 31st of May.

Content with his luggage, Combeferre went through the list of notes he had to write – instructions for his mother, for his brother, and if need be, instructions for his solicitor. Despite the gravity of things to come, Combeferre admitted to a sudden exhilaration. His mind grew dull and sharp at the same time, and though he would have considered himself immune to such careless ideas, the thought of their plans bearing fruit gave him a sense of liberation.

In his ruminations, Combeferre failed to notice his brother slither into the room. The room was previously his but was now used for guests, and in recent years Combeferre was more the latter than former. In the days prior, Combeferre’s brother had been at the point of exhaustion, but at seeing his brother packing, he was instantly alert.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asked as he laid a breakfast tray on the table. The response was a nod and a shuffling across the room. “I must return to Paris.” Combeferre barely spared him a glance, but his brother was undeterred. “Paris?” His brow furrowed. “But mother is not well yet.”

“She will be well soon enough,” Combeferre paused to give him a smile, the most that their family could make of a beam. “Of that, I’ve made sure.” But the smile could not hide his growing urgency.

“Is it business then? A class?” His brother moved forward in an attempt to gain his full attention. “Surely it can wait. Our mother–”

“Will recover. As I said.”

The firmness in his speech was not lost, but at finally finding his purse, Combeferre did not have time to reflect on it. He moved to wear his coat, worn from travel and hardly recovered from the road’s dust, the dark blue already beginning to fade. He adjusted the collar and began inspecting himself in the mirror. “I have asked some of our neighbors to look into our mother while I am gone,” he said. “She needs only rest and fluids. There will be no further complications, but she will be thirsty. Her limbs may feel cramped. Keep her warm. Make her drink. Engage her in conversation once in a while. As for this year’s harvest…”

Combeferre chanced to look up and his next words were lost at the sight he found on the mirror. The letter that he had left on the desk, the missive from Enjolras bearing news of Lamarque, news of that and more, was in his brother’s hands. His brother’s eyes were wide, all trace of weariness lost, replaced by increasing bafflement. He read like a man starved for words, eyes skimming quicker and quicker from each side of the page. His hands trembled, and as comprehension dawned, another emotion flickered across his face.

Dread.

The room, which had been humid, was now stifling. His brother’s hold on the letter tightened, making the paper curve in on itself. He reached the bottom of the page, and as he read the final scrawl which was Enjolras’s signature, he looked up to Combeferre, as if clarity could come with a glance, held the missive out, and in a slow, uncertain breath, said, “What’s this?”

Combeferre held his gaze in the mirror. All sense of urgency had gone.

“Julien–”

“What’s this?” He hissed, emphasizing every word. Combeferre whipped around to face him. “I will explain.”

“A count of men? Carbines? Do explain!”

His harshness startled Combeferre. Julien’s voice was low for fear of their mother overhearing, but his tone was biting. “That fascination should have left you long ago,” he spat. “I’ve never questioned what you did with your life, brother, so long as you keep it!” He began to pace. “When we heard of Place de Greve, Mother could barely eat. It was not until your letter arrived that she began to truly live again. And here you are once more eager to die!” Combeferre pressed his lips together. His jaw was rigid but resolute. “That is not my intention and you know it.”

“Oh, but it is.” Julien strode forward and took hold of Combeferre’s elbows. “You are here,” his grip tightened, patting to reassure both Combeferre and himself, “and you are safe. You could be in Paris now, caught up in your insurrection and perhaps dying without a word, and we would be here thinking that you had only forgotten to write. Our mother would be sitting out at the steps wondering how you were when she should be claiming your body.” Julien shook his head, as if trying to wring the image out of his mind. “But instead, you are here. Our mother’s timely health has granted you safe passage from the storm. Must you surrender it so callously?”

Julien was nearly hysterical. For all his effrontery, he was almost breaking. Seldom did he indulge in these fiery declamations, but when he did, he was much like his brother. Furious.

Combeferre grasped the sides of his neck and made them lock eyes. “We are not surrendering, Julien. We are fighting.” He ran his hand across Julien’s cheek, a childhood habit. “I confess it will not be a simple case as strolling into victory, but we do not go there with the sole intention of dying. The results are not as predetermined as that, and as you said, preparations have been made. I must be there to ensure they are met.” His eyes softened. “I am needed.”

“For what?” Julien bellowed, all pretense of discretion gone. “What is one man less in an army? Your absence will hardly be felt. You will be better off here.”

“And cower in safety while my brothers fight?”

Silence.

Julien stepped back, stunned. He pried off Combeferre’s hands, and many times, he began to speak but stop short. Combeferre began to worry, but as he moved forward so did Julien, and with a finality, he placed a palm on his chest, gesturing to himself. “I”, he forced the words out, “I am your brother. Or had you forgotten that?”

Combeferre felt his throat constrict. “Had you forgotten us? Has it come to it that you can embrace a stranger as family and forget your flesh and blood? Is it possible… brother?” He sighed, and before his voice could fully leave him, implored: “If you can die for the people, for your–” he dared say the it, “–your brothers, then why can you not live for me?”

Combeferre released a breath through his nose. He did not trust himself to speak. Had it only been a minute since he was attending to his possessions? It seemed a year. Had it only been a year since Julien was seven and ten and deferring to his judgment on taxes? Combeferre was no longer so certain. As if finally surfacing for air, Combeferre realized that he had been avoiding this moment. To him, this confrontation was only to be made on paper, when he was tucked away in Paris and his brother safely home, able to deliver the harshest of his pleas only through ink. Never in person, and never so effectively. Was he afraid that he would doubt? Was he detached to the point of forgetting? Was he merely protective?

No, he was selfish. But so was Liberty, and Liberty demanded sacrifice.

“You must understand, Julien. I am a lieutenant.” He spoke as if the word could explain enough. “My presence is required, and I do not say this out of arrogance. There are good men there, but only a few who Enjolras trusts to carry out his commands–”

“Enjolras?” Julien cried out, venom all but visibly dripping from his tone. His bearing was more than ready to stage his own revolution, but his revolt was not to overthrow a familial claim, but to regain one. Combeferre grit his teeth. “You will do well to honor that name, child.”

Julien trembled, and though he stood erect, he averted his eyes. His brother had never called him child, never called him petit. Combeferre had insisted on equality, but in that instant, the pedestal separating brothers by virtue of age sprung once more. Combeferre’s voice was cold. “You will speak with respect, and you will speak calmly.” Julien did not respond, but Combeferre found it in himself to let the usual gentleness seep back into his tone. “I have remained honest with you, brother, despite what you think. I tell you what I can, but only so far as to do you no harm should the wrong men hear. My shelves have always been open, and I left them to you with a wish that you come to understand them on your own. To hear you now, it is as if I’ve left you in the dark. Have I been remiss? Have you learned nothing from me?”

Julien scoffed. “I have learned everything from you!” he said. “Do you forget that you taught me how to read and write? I learned how to break light into colors, how to predict an early harvest, how to tear a man’s argument in so few words. All of it. From you.” Julien was out of breath, and the expression he had when he declared himself ‘brother’ returned. With a palm, he gestured at Combeferre, from his head to his boots, capturing him and the whole of him. Julien whispered, half in plea and half to himself: “You’re brilliant.”

His hand stayed suspended in the air. “You can give so much. Why throw it away in violence?” Desperation wrought his face. “If you wish to end all violence, why must you use it at all?”

Combeferre laid his hands on Julien’s shoulders. They settled there heavily, both to steady himself and his brother. His eyes were sad, an expression that Julien took as pity for his inability to understand, but in truth, it was resignation. “We do what we must,” Combeferre said, and it seemed to him that his voice was not his own but deeper, more resolute, hymn-like. “We take action not to reserve ourselves a place in history, but to elevate the people. If we must stain our hands for the future to be pure, then so be it. In fraternity, we seek to be free.”

Julien met his gaze, though he felt no less helpless. He noted the ‘we’. “At the price of your lives?”

Combeferre shook his head. “I have already told you that we will not go there to die, but as I bend my knees for progress, so shall I give my life for liberty. I beg you, Julien. Do not be so certain of doom. We may succeed and we may not, but we must still act.”

A weak, warm voice drifted from the adjacent room. Their mother had called for them.

Neither brother moved. The moment lapsed into silence, and it would have remained there had Julien not broken it with a sob.

Combeferre’s arms were around him instantly. “You must not die,” he kept repeating. “You must not die. You cannot. Swear that you will not. The farm–”

“Is in good hands.”

“Mother?”

“Is in good hands.”

“And myself?” Julien pulled away to meet his face. “Who will take care of me?”

For a while, Combeferre only stared at him, and he saw a vision from long ago, in the same room, with the same tears, on the day that he left to study in Paris, Julien barely reaching his chest. He put a hand on his brother’s head and stroked his hair. “Have you not boasted so often that you are already a man?”

Like that day, Julien buried his face on his shoulders, his body wracking with repressed sobs. Combeferre held him until his tears dried. Their mother lay waiting in the next room.


End file.
